THE CONQUEST OF NEW GRANADA.
Mn. CIINITINGRAME GRAHAM writes so well that any new book of his is welcome, irrespective of the theme. But in his latest work, The Conquest of New Granada (Heinemann, 15s. net), he has found an exceptionally interesting subject, as picturesque and dramatic in its way as the conquests of Mexico and Peru, with a hero in Don Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada, whose stubborn persistence in the face of difficulties was not inferior to that of Cortes or Pizarro. Quesada was sent in 1536 by the Governor of the Venezuelan coast settlement to explore the upper course of the River Magdalena. His little force, fighting its way through the hostile tribes and suffering incredible hardships in the bush, came, after a year or more, to the foot of the mountains,, They found a rough pass and reached the plateau where Bogota, now stands. Quesada had 166 men left out of a thousand, but he fought and beat the Chibcha Indians and established a Spanish colony. The Chibchas had a distinctive civilization of their own, under a great chief named Bogota ; they practised human sacrifice and had a calendar with twenty moons to the year. They had never seen horses until the Spanish troopers advanced upon them ; the terror caused by the half-starved chargers helped Quesada to overcome the Indians when they outnumbered him by hundreds to one. By a strange chance Quesada had no sooner completed his conquest than he was joined by the remnants of two other Spanish expeditions, Belalcazar coming over the mountains from Quito in Peru, and Federman from Eastern Venezuela through the wilds and over the Andes. These early Spanish colonists excite our admiration by their courage and powers of endurance, whatever may be thought of their methods of rule. Mr. Graham is fond of reminding his readers that the Spaniards were no worse than other people ; it is not the whole truth, for the circumstances- varied in different regions and some Spaniards were cruel and avaricious while others were not. Quesada himself appears to have been exceptionally humane. He tortured one unhappy chief to death in a vain attempt to induce him to reveal the gold belonging to his tribe, but this, the biographer assures us, was Quesada's only lapse into barbarity, and it is fair to add that the Council of the Indies tried and punished him for the crime. Quesada was refused the governorship of the new colony, but years later, when he was nearly seventy, he was given leave to head an expedition to the Upper Orinoco and to occupy a large stretch of land in that district. The expedition was an utter failure ; after three years of wandering on the plains, covered with grass that rose above a man's head, Quesada struggled back to Bogota with twenty-five men out of a force of four hundred. His last exploit, at the age of seventy-seven, was to repress an Indian rising which threatened the destruction of the colony. The old man, carried in a litter by his Indian servants, proved invincible. He died at Mariquita in 1579. He was then eighty years of age. Pizarro was nearly seventy when he was murdered ; Cortes at his death was sixty-two. While it cannot be said that New Granada had proved as rich as either Mexico or Peru, it has been in some ways a more successful Spanish colony than either of the larger countries because it is healthier and more remote from the world. Mr. Cunningham° Graham's fascinating narrative, however, shows that Quesada, in personal bravery and in the arts of managing men, was not inferior to his more famous countrymen. As a true story of adventure the book is much to be commended.
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